Mary Cassatt's La Toilette, shows a woman washing her face and only her back is exposed. This is a portrait of a woman in an average feminine role. There are some people who will sexualize every thing that a woman does but most people would agree that Mary Cassatt's La Toilette is unerotic.
Edgar Degas's Bathers on the Grass, shows two women sunbathing nude. People have a biological need for the vitamin D that sunlight provides as well as the comfort that the sun provides. Humans have been bathing in the sun since the beginning of the species. Sunbathing is a normal activity, but in this picture the nudity of the women are the major context of the portrait. Women appear to be portrayed as a sexual object by Degas.
Edgar Degas's Woman Bathing, shows a woman nude and brushing her hair. Women walk out of the bath still nude and brush their hair on occasion, so this can be deemed as a normal activity. Edgar Degas is notorious for…show more content… The subject in the painting is fully clothed in a luxurious dress and she is simply in front of her mirror grooming herself.
The woman in Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's La Grande Odalisque is portrayed as a sexual object. She is naked and holding a feather duster while gazing seductively. Believing that housework is a seductive chore is man's fantasy. Even though chambermaids are traditionally female jobs, laying around naked holding an ostrich feather duster is not a normal feminine role.
The models in Eugène Delacroix's Women of Algiers are being presented as sexual objects. A harem of women is a role that is occupied by females but the way these women are depicted is sexual in nature. Muslim women rarely show any parts of their body but the women depicted in this portrait are showing more of their skin than most Muslim women would ever show. This could easily be a portrait of Muslim women gathered around each other in
